Today We All Pretty Much Take Music For Granted,

but where did music, 

or I should say the instruments that make music come from? it is with thanks to Athanasius Kircher, engraving from Mundus subterraneus, quo universae denique naturae divitiae. 1655 printing, portrait of Athanasius Kircher. Public domain, he was a German polymath and Jesuit priest, luckily for us if you have a interest in musical instruments, he had a lifelong fascination with sound and devoted two books to the subject: Musurgia Universalis (1650), on the theoretical (and theological) aspects, and Phonurgia Nova (1673), on the science of acoustics and its practical applications. It's no surprise then to learn that his famed museum at Rome's Collegio Romano boasted— in addition to “vomiting statues”, ghost-conjuring mirrors, and other curious wonders — a vast and diverse collection of musical instruments, 

much of what we know of Kircher's museum today is thanks to his student and fellow Jesuit priest Filippo Buonanni (1638-1725), who succeeded Kircher as both Professor of Mathematics and, upon Kircher's death, as chief custodian of the museum for which he produced an epic and exhaustive, near-800-page catalogue in 1709. Following in his master's footsteps, Buonanni too held a dizzying array of interests and specialisms including numismatics, microscopy, spontaneous generation, Chinese laquer, seashells (on which he produced the first monograph), and also, like Kircher, music, I have featured a few of the instruments depicted one above, and a few more below,

inspired by the collection of instruments in Kircher's wunderkammer, and intrigued by the stories behind them, in 1722 Buonanni published his Gabinetto Armonico pieno d’istromenti sonori (or Harmonic cabinet full of sonorous instruments), an attempt to catalogue, for the first time, the musical instruments of the world. While there's a short and often illuminating text for each instrument it is the 152 engraved plates executed by Flemish artist and publisher Arnold van Westerhout, the featured instruments are divided into three sections — wind, string, and percussion — and preceded by thirteen brief discussions of other musical categories, including: military, funeral, used in sacrifices, and, intriguingly, as used at sea: not sirens, but chanting sailors, as an aside if you do follow the links have a few coffees by your side, they are long, but oh so informative reads.